After highlighting queer love in a time of apocalypse, The Last Of Us grows its ratings for a third consecutive week
The well-loved third episode of The Last Of Ushas made it HBO's fourth series to average 15 million+ viewers per episode
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Call it a swing and a hit: after a strongly-reviewed third episode that made a significant deviation from the original video game’s content, HBO’s The Last Of Us has grown its audience for the third consecutive week in a row. On Sunday, 6.5 million people tuned in to watch the series, a 12% increase from the previous week, according to Nielsen and first-party data.
With TLOU’s inaugural season now boasting 21.3 million viewers across its first two episodes, HBO now has four shows averaging over 15 million viewers per episode for the first time in its history. House Of The Dragon, Euphoria, and The White Lotus have all also achieved the number. TLOU’s season premiere catapulted it to the position of HBO’s second-biggest premiere ever, only eclipsed by HOTD.
“Long, Long Time,” the most recent episode of the fledgling, big-budget series, follows Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett as a queer couple who build a home against the backdrop of a brutal pandemic caused by an infectious fungus that turns human hosts into zombie-like creatures. Critics praised the episode’s emotional wallop and carefully-tread plot detour, with The A.V. Club’s David Cote lauding it as “the greatest romance you may ever see in a zombie thriller.”
Helmed by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann (the latter of whom also wrote and directed the original Playstation game), TLOU has six episodes left in its first season and has already been renewed for a second. The series airs Sunday nights at 9 P.M. E.T. on HBO and HBO Max. Keep up with The A.V. Club’s weekly recaps here.
13 Comments
It’s very weird to attribute how many people tuned in to a show on a particular night to the episode’s content; people didn’t tune in to TLOU because they knew what they were in for. Y’all did the same thing with House of the Dragon’s incest episode.
This is true. Did they though? I guess there is an implication. I had no idea this was coming. I loved it and thought it was beautiful and I cried my eyes out. But I didn’t know what it was about before I turned it on.
There were a lot of mentions online and in articles for several weeks suggesting that Episode 3 was going to be a game changing episode. So, people didn’t know what they were in for necessarily, but there had been a lot of talk ahead of that particular episode.
The funny thing though – not a game changing episode, at all.Great episode of tv though, no doubt.
So glad to hear it’s doing well, because the show has been great so far. As much as I’m into this season, I’m really hoping it does well enough to get picked up for seasons 2 and 3. The story of the first game (and the liberties they’re taking with the story) is so compelling, but the second game blew my mind even further.
It was already picked for season 2 after the second episode. If they’re going to make a season per game then the show probably won’t be longer than that, but I guess it’s always possible that there’ll be an original in-between season.
I don’t know how much weight this holds but I had read their intention is to do the first game in the first season, make the second game into seasons 2 and 3, and then be done with it.
According to the Bella Ramsey interview, the cast has just been told that they’re officially doing Season 2.
Every time I see her name, I think that was her character name on GoT and not her actual name.
Everything has to be gay or it’s “discrimination”…
hey fuck you
Now that’s what I’m looking for! I guess we’ll see if the episode appealed or turned off watchers in the numbers next week – hopefully appealed (and next week is much more action-centric in the teaser).
The well-loved third episode of The Last Of Ushas made it HBO’s fourth series to average 15 million+ viewers per episodeThere needs to be a space between Us and has.